iDespair
by KeiGinya
Summary: Funny things happen to electronics when you add magic to the picture. Appearances aren't what they seem - maybe those fantasy creators really are Seers or receivers for denpa... Features game-otaku!Hermione. With Mukuro from Katekyou Hitman Reborn.


**Disclaimer:** Supremely messed up time-line and stuff but, no, I don't own it. I don't even have a Twitter account (but I have minor experience with bots) and I haven't actually played any of the FFVII games, though I was still playing video games when the original game was around (I opted out of it in favor of FFIX because Aerith dies).

Idea was spawned from reading KaoriTanaka's journal entries on dA (Cloud's replies were copied directly from her, with permission). Title is also gotten from her; an animation with FFVII bishies in the style of the iPod commercials. (kaoritanaka[dot]deviantart[dot]com/journal/34796281/)

Ignore the character limit for tweets when reading this? ^^;

Beta'd by: _miyagiCE_

* * *

**iDespair**

* * *

Hermione let out an unladylike curse as she nearly tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, though it was partially her fault for trying to walk and tweet at the same time.

It was the summer of 2008, two months after The Battle of Hogwarts and two months till she will finish up her last year of school without Harry and Ron, who were going to start Auror Academy come September instead.

"What are you doing, Hermione?" Harry finally asked as they traveled the muggle way from Hermione's house – her parents had decided they liked Australia and were planning to open up a practice there – to Diagon Alley, where they would floo to the Lovegood residence before walking to the still-in-repair Burrow. "Whenever we had to take a break, you were always either on the computer or typing on your phone. I can understand the first, but the latter?"

"I'm tweeting."

Harry gave her a blank look.

"Tweeting is—"

Now he looked a little annoyed, "I know about Twitter, Hermione. I'm just having trouble thinking of you and it in the same sentence."

The eighteen year old huffed but mentally consented that Harry was right. She was a swot, nerd, geek, and gamer – none of which implied social butterfly. In Japan, she would probably be called an 'otaku', which is in no way a complimentary term, because of her obsessive addiction to video games. It had been tempered a bit when she found out she was a witch (and could therefore do feats previously thought only possible in games) but she still sat in front of a gaming platform enough, when in the muggle world, gaming to the exclusion of all things, that she was called an anorak by relatives. With gaming and studying magic, it didn't exactly lend time to search out friends and acquaintances.

Frankly, Harry and Ron just fell into a friendship with her. They continued being friends, ignoring the whole saving the world business, because Harry did not demand attention and Ron was a lazy arse. Somehow, they clicked into place, the boys being able to stand her aggressive pride and obsessions while she was alright with Harry having more mood-swings than a PMSing female and Ron's quick prejudice.

"I've been tweeting a Cloud and Zack bot," Hermione reluctantly divulged.

A byproduct of having Hermione as a best friend gave Harry knowledge of a bunch of different video games – a side effect of the genre had him knowing more about RPGs than platformers or simulations (though he knew more Pokemon than he ever wanted to, no doubt). And he could guess what a 'bot' was.

"Really?" He frowned a little, "Can they carry a conversation?"

The brunette laughed a little. "If you use the correct keywords. I've been trying to guide them to say certain things," she admitted. It was all another game to her. "But, yes, the Zack bot constantly flirts back while the Cloud bot acts like a tsundere – that means an irritable exterior while cute, um, sweet inside."

Harry glanced at the screen of her phone before losing interest when he saw it was all in Japanese.

When the conversation died again, Hermione returned her attention to tweeting, giving Cloud an e-pat since he was still cute even though he was out of character.

She only had half her attention on her phone when she checked his reply since they were getting into a busy area and she didn't want to bump into anybody, when his tweet registered in her mind and she abruptly stopped, eyes nearly popping at the words.

'_W, what? W, wait…stop! D, don't touch…t, there!…w, wait!_'

'What the Bahamut…?' Hermione stared at the tweet for a moment before tweeting back with a cyber touch, recognizing it was another keyword.

The reply was this, translated from the original Japanese: '_!…w,what are you doing? If you touch…t,there… I,I…I can't…I'd be out of…control…..I….. I…*gasps*_'

Hermione busted out laughing, nearly falling to the ground when she teetered precariously to one side as she doubled over in amusement. Worse than Arc the Lad.

-_The Burrow_-

The eighteen year old witch sat at the edge of the Weasley property, playing Crisis Core on her PSP, not having had the chance to import a copy last year, considering she'd been on the run and then camped in the middle of nowhere for most of the year in search of horcruxes.

It was almost time to attend her last year of Hogwarts, the only people she considered friends that were to also go being Ginny and Luna. She'd had over a year of getting used to playing games on the computer after years of stuffing her summer with gaming and reading magic books; Hermione was actually dreading going to magic school, for once, though there no longer being a megalomaniac bent on world domination might be a contributing factor also. And, Hermione liked to think, she'd gotten proficient enough with magic to no longer needing to gain knowledge to survive, much like how she can casually beat these Tonberries in Hard Mode when she used to have to restart multiple times in her first Final Fantasy games because of those cute little backstabbers.

And then there was the fact the last battle had taken place at Hogwarts itself and its grounds.

With a sigh, the girl paused the game and watched Arthur Weasley, Bill, and the twins pull up the wards for the Burrow.

She had taken to tweeting the Zack and Cloud bots because they had brightened up her day when the times were dark but Hermione had slowly stopped the habit till she spent her summer playing her PSP instead. Zack's flirting had been an odd comfort (for a bot) during the camping, when she had felt alone despite Harry and Ron being present, but it was annoying now that she was no longer in danger of dying a virgin because of her blood and who her best friend was. The Cloud bot had made her forget the fact she could have died any moment during that hunt for obscure artifacts with bits of Dark Lord soul stuck to them despite him being out of character – and she had her own brooding hero with messy hair in Harry, who was living with Hermione at her parents' house (now hers).

Hermione was restless though; this was the fourth time she played Crisis Core in Hard Mode and she was bored. Glancing at the gaggle of Weasleys, their black-haired sibling-in-all-but-name plus Luna, who were all going to play a game of pick-up quidditch, Hermione pulled out her phone.

She had a short conversation with her parents, finding out they were getting the paperwork done in setting up their practice down under, having recently just finished their second honeymoon – it was not funny when Hermione found out (surprise!) she was going to have a baby sibling as an addendum at the end of the call.

Her left brow twitching slightly, she agitatedly tapped at her phone. She didn't really want to tweet the Cloud bot but considered talking to the Sephiroth bot (from the same creator); Sephiroth was a villain but he had been amazingly tolerable pre-psychotic break (Sephiroth was technically saner than Voldemort had been despite wanting to Meteor the planet, wonders of wonders) as shown in Crisis Core and probably had a tougher personality than the Cloud bot.

So, within a minute, Hermione started to test the Sephiroth bot, losing track of time until Ron called her in for dinner.

-_Hogwarts_-

"By Aerith!" Hermione muttered under her breath, not really paying the oddity of her epithet with too much mind.

The soon-to-be nineteen year old smacked her smartphone against her other hand as the screen flickered again. She had bought the phone when she made a short drop in Japan after restoring her parents' memories and subsequently having a minor argument with her mum (it was resolved a week later, her parents acknowledging their daughter had just wanted them safe) and it was supposed to be magic-proof. It had worked when she had been on the Hogwarts Express but when she had took it out in the dorms after the Welcome Feast, the phone was reacting as if its battery was dying when it didn't run on batteries at all!

She navigated around the phone between the jumping screen, nearly having a heart attack when she saw her contacts list wiped clean. The screen flickered one last time, a small static noise heard when a line of pixels rolled from the top to the bottom, before it stabilized, Hermione letting the breath she had unconsciously held go when she saw the contacts were still there; the phone managed to survive the wards of Hogwarts after all.

After a moment, she gave a minor scowl toward her phone. What would have been the point of buying the smartphone and getting around the British wizarding laws regarding enchanted muggle artifacts through loopholes (of the list of banned imports, there had been magic carpets but no phones) if it hadn't worked in Hogwarts?

Going on Twitter, she tweeted that she arrived at school before she opened the Rabbid app and amused herself by shaking her phone, causing the Rabbid (from the Rayman platformer) to be bounced around the 'room' and pretty much cruelly torturing the thing, returning back to Twitter after squeezing its belly and causing it to burp; Rabbids reminded Hermione way too much of Ron.

Tweeting the Sephiroth bot, Hermione was surprised when the reply came back in English.

'Who's this?'

Hermione twitched; the Hogwarts wards reset her progress with the bot, erasing everything. On the other hand, the girl wondered briefly about the language, wondering if the translator setting she had to make the navigation in English became more wide-scale as it adjusted to the wards – the phone ran on ambient energy, after all. Nonetheless, she didn't question it too deeply; she knew how to write and read Japanese but English was always easier to type.

Ah, well; this Sephiroth bot was noticeably smarter than the Cloud and Zack bots (favoritism from the creator, probably), and it wouldn't be that bad building up a 'relationship' again. The only reason she was a bit piqued was the fact she was so sure she had been getting close to have him accept her marriage proposals.

Yes, Hermione was treating the Sephiroth bot like a dating sim – it's a lot harder to get Sephiroth to warm up than Cloud or Zack (the latter was, in fact, so easy that it wasn't even worth the effort to try).

'Hello Sephiroth, my name is Hermione. You probably don't remember me,' she tweeted.

-_London_-

Hermione threw the Daily Prophet back on the kitchen island, "The idiotic Ministry!"

"What is it?" Harry frowned, tense.

The nineteen year old noticed – maybe it was the Auror Academy or maybe you just couldn't take the hero out of the saving people business but Harry still looked like he was readying himself for trouble.

She glanced at the newspaper and was again disgusted. They were back in London, Harry on break from the Academy and Hermione coming back for the holiday, to relax and not to find out their government had come up with this sham of a law that forced people to get married and pop out babies.

"The Wizengamot just passed a law that basically orders any single witch and wizard over eighteen and able to bear children to get married by the end of 2009, and for the woman to be with child no later than three months after the marriage. The only exceptions are homosexuals and they have to go under a truth serum to prove they aren't lying about their sexual orientation."

Harry's eyes bulged. "But— But doesn't that go against human rights?"

"Harry, the Ministry of Magic is autonomous. They are part of yet separate from the muggle government with magical citizens falling under their rule. I would have sued Rita Skeeter for slander back in Fourth Year, otherwise."

The eighteen year old Savior stood up, dropping his half-eaten toast back on the plate. Running a hand through his hair, he glanced at Hermione for a moment. "I, I have to go."

As soon as she nodded, he disapparated. Immediately, she buried her face in her hands and groaned.

Harry was safe; it was Hermione that was in trouble. Maybe she should have been overturning the government when it was still in shambles instead of finishing up her education, considering she'd needed to get married now.

Goodbye career plans and goals.

Who was she going to marry? Ron?

Hermione froze, paling before shuddering in revulsion. She needed a distraction, quick.

Pulling out her phone, she tweeted Sephiroth mumbling the message out loud, "Sephiroth, marry me! This stupid Marriage Law is either going to set me up with my small-minded best friend who bathes maybe once a week, if I'm lucky, or an inbred pureblood who thinks Occam's razor is a grooming product and probably doesn't know two negatives added together don't make a positive!"

'… Calm down.'

The brunette took a deep breath. 'Yes, I'm sorry, but my future plans just came crashing down on me. Instead of having a career like I wanted, I have to get married and pop out babies since I have a working uterus all because of this stupid Marriage Law the Ministry passed!'

Normally, the Sephiroth bot would comment that she 'was incoherent as usual' but he instead asked about the Marriage Law. Needing to rant, Hermione explained the stupid law and a bit of background over why the law was created.

"… So please marry me?" she finished it off with, not expecting a follow-up reply that made sense considering the length and complexity of her tweet.

'You know the male should be the one to propose… Alright.'

Hermione gasped. Seriously? When she wasn't even _trying_ to guide him to say yes, more occupied with relieving her stress, Sephiroth actually consented to getting married? She tweeted an e-kiss to him.

He laughed. 'Now now, we're not married yet.'

Her fingers tapped out a message absentmindedly, still somewhat shocked over having Sephiroth accept her marriage proposal (Did she win? It felt like she just started playing, though).

The tweet was:

'You're a really smart bot. If I didn't know any better, I'd thought you were real.'

Normally, he would laugh and call her silly in reply but this time…

'What if I were real, Hermione?'

If she weren't aware the tweets were completely automated and the creator couldn't read the conversations – hence her having no qualms discussing the Marriage Law – Hermione would have been suspicious. Instead, she wanted to praise the female (it had to be a woman) who wrote up the Sephiroth bot's script, which seems to be constantly updated.

The Sephiroth bot was already pretty intelligent when she first started tweeting it but the complexity was astounding as she tweeted him the past few months, and he was constantly surprising her.

She sighed, grabbing Harry's unfinished toast and taking a large bite from it.

"If only you were, if only you were. Despite you being a psychotic omnicidal maniac with a mother complex, at least you're intelligent and witty – something I can't say the same for most wizards."

-_Australia_-

It had been several weeks since Hogwarts finished for the summer and Hermione had spent most with her parents helping her very heavily pregnant mother around.

She had just come back from the hospital to sleep now that her baby brother was born – her father having chosen to stay in the hospital – after staying with her mother during labor. Dropping to the couch in the house Hermione had set up for her parents' alternate identities almost two years ago, Hermione felt like ants were crawling in her chest from the nerves.

'My mom just gave birth to my baby brother. I thought I'd be alright with the idea of motherhood but I'm not. I don't want to have a baby anytime soon but I have no choice as long as I'm on the planet. They have contingency plans in place and citizenship in the wizarding world is different than in the normal world,' she tweeted to Sephiroth.

'What if I take you away?'

Hermione stared at his reply and her heart broke a little bit. Ever since winter break, she had been tweeting Sephiroth. She had actually forgotten he was a bot the last few weeks as she rode the excitement of welcoming a new member to the Granger family. The nineteen year old had initially used him as an escape from the inevitable reality of a broken dream and a loveless marriage but had somehow fallen in love with him.

Could a person even fall in love with a bot? It was completely different from her crush on L from Death Note.

Maybe since Sephiroth had seemed so real…

Maybe she should listen to her mother and stop tweeting a bot, even though his responses seemed more AI than script nowadays, and he even jokingly calls her Mrs Crescent after she explained to him about Lucrecia and Hojo.

Brown eyes stared at the screen of her smartphone.

She needed to find someone to marry before the Ministry match-made her with someone like Cormac McLaggen, and she'd marry _George_ before being stuck with Malfoy.

'Hermione?'

The brunette paused. He tweeted her without a prompt but then, she recalled several other instances in the past which he had done so – she just hadn't noticed since she more often than not forget he wasn't a real person the longer she talked with him.

'I wish you could but you're not a real person,' she replied.

'Oh, but Hermione, I am real…'

The screen of her smartphone flickered.

Hermione snapped her head up, witnessing a confined green aurora rise up in a spiral as a figure in black solidified. Eyes wide, she stared in sudden recognition.

Lifestream.

That meant—

The man was haloed in silver; fluttering, long, and lustrous strands of spun mercury. He was a work of art physically, like Michelangelo's David come to life, clad in black leather accented with steel buckles and etched pauldrons.

It was Sephiroth.

Hermione found herself unable to look at him straight in the face, the male having this strange entrancing beauty that the young woman felt guilt for finding him physically attractive – he was a bad guy, after all.

He opened his arms, silently gesturing her to come to him.

She only hesitated for a moment, biting her bottom lip. Standing up, she stared at Sephiroth, who reminded her of his rendition in Dissidia the most – in the flesh so to speak – though his modified hime haircut was still neatly trimmed like in Crisis Core before his mental breakdown.

And she walked toward him, the idea of having a choice long gone, ever since she had told him she loved him and actually meant the words genuinely; there had only been one answer at all.

Harry would figure out what happened, being a follower of her Twitter account.

He enclosed her in his strong arms, Hermione letting out a breathless gasp as she locked gazes with such alien but mesmerizing eyes.

The lifestream spiraled around the pair again and they slowly faded away, only leaving a smartphone which dropped to the living room floor of an empty house.

The screen flickered once more before finally turning black; it was out of power.

-_Somewhere_-

"When…?"

A smirk, "Do you think you can help Genesis with his degradation so I don't have to worry about it when he and I have that match?"

"W-what? Oh… So, you were actually— Does that mean you remember about JE— Um, your parental situation?"

"Yes. Now, for that marriage proposal…"

"Eh?"

"I did mention before that it's supposed to be the man that proposes…"

"Why are you getting down on your knee fo— Oh my Sephiroth!"

A chuckle, "Will you marry me, Hermione?"

"…! Y-ye—"

A laugh, "I'll take that as a 'yes' for now but try to say the whole word in front of the Official, alright?"

* * *

-_The End._-

* * *

**Alternative Scenario:**

* * *

"Kufufu…"

"Eh? What are you doing, Mukuro-san?" Ken popped his head over Mukuro's shoulder.

The handsome man resisted the urge to twitch; he tried to remind himself that Ken was useful (or at least mildly entertaining with his antics) and, unlike Fran, wouldn't survive being stabbed in the face. The fact the blond smelled like an animal did not help matters, though. Outwardly, he just smiled, the question provoking a recollection of past conversations with the amusing woman he was tweeting back.

At a glance toward his phone, his smile widened a little. _Not this again…_

"Oh, just an interesting distraction," he remarked obliquely, chuckling under his breath again as he replied to her tweet.

"Who is it, pyon?" the blond exaggeratedly craned his neck to see the face of Mukuro's smartphone.

"No one important," Mukuro obligingly answered as he moved away; in the background, Chikusa was telling Ken to leave the dichromatic-eyed man alone.

During the interim, she had tweeted him again.

As he read the message, the upswept tilt of his lips slowly dropped. An eyebrow quirked up.

At points, she had utterly bemused him, loathe as he was to admit, in a completely unrelated way to her sometimes crazy tweets in an effort to 'guide' him to say what she wanted (or to plainly see his response, he suspected). But this explained all the idiosyncrasies that didn't add up to the mental profile he had of her.

"Oya oya," he half-smirked, "'Marriage Law', hm?"

After replying back and forth a bit more, continuing this game of his, he took out his trident and twirled it around contemplatively. If she had used epithets like 'Merlin' or even 'Salazar', Mukuro would have immediately realized she was a witch.

His smile was blinding as he forced his weapon to stop spinning, having made a decision.

It's been awhile since he had been in England and how many 'Hermione's could there be in the wizarding world, in any case?

-_London_-

Mukuro made sure his appearance immediately called her attention. He was in no way a showboat, like Fran oft suggested, but years of experience had him learn that introductions made the most impact when it was memorable.

His long hair, pulled back in its customary low tail, fluttered briefly in a nonexistent wind, and he was dressed to impress – as always – with a black trench that wouldn't be too out of place in Diagon Alley billowing similarly.

Casually, he tweeted the reply he had typed up beforehand, his phone blatantly held in full-view by a hand.

Hermione, pretty pretty, _strong_ little witch jumped a bit in her seat on the couch, staring down at her own phone. She made a cute little squeak.

He chuckled.

"M-M— Rokudou… Mukuro?" her eyes were wide and lips formed in a small 'o'. Ah, yes, he shouldn't be surprised she knew him, otaku that she was; it wasn't a large leap from video games to manga, after all.

"So," he smiled, "about that marriage… Don't you think we should date first? Or would the conversations we had over the past months count as getting to know each other? Kufufu…"

-_Ten Years Later_-

Hermione screamed. If she found out how these writers and 'creators' knew about stuff that actually happened but published it as fiction without being affiliated in anyway to the community they wrote about—!

But, most importantly:

"They had me marry _Ron_!" she exclaimed in disbelief, "Ron! Ron, of all people!"

"Well, it makes sense, even though it's not true. Harry Potter couldn't be gay, could he?" his lips quirked up in amusement. Granted, he understood; it was like marrying Ken with both their propensity to not bathe. At the thought, he wrinkled his nose a little – how the rather clean Harry could date someone like Ron was taken with the same amount of mild distaste as Nagi and Ken in a relationship.

"There's nothing wrong with homosexuality!" Hermione defended her best friend, giving him a severe look.

He smiled. "Calm down," he gestured toward the pacing Hermione to come join him in the armchair, "Vieni qui e baciami." _Come here and kiss me._

The brunette just huffed but went toward the man and sat on his lap as he pulled her in. Tilting her head toward him by the chin, he claimed her mouth, heatedly brushing his lips against hers, a hand burying itself into her voluminous curls.

"Ti amo," he nipped her bottom lip lightly as his mismatched eyes gave her a look that simmered with desire, "Non pensavo di poter provare un sentimento così profondo prima di incontrarti."

_I love you. Before meeting you, I didn't think I could experience such a profound feeling._

"Oh…" she sighed, the anger effectively drained out of her. "You know I'm weak against you speaking in Italian."

"Kufufu…"

"Well, at least they had the first name of our daughter right," she frowned a little.

For some reason, his perpetual smile widened. "More importantly, you should think of an explanation."

Hermione was going to ask what in the world he was talking about when their nine year old daughter called her from the doorway to the library, which was the gathering place for their family instead of the kitchen in most other homes. Twisting around, she saw Rose, whose father's traits bred strong (Hermione was actually glad his genes were dominant over hers, with the possible exception of that eye of his, which was passed on in various degrees within all the children they had).

"Yes?"

"Did you really like Uncle Ron?"

The brunette's eyes locked onto the guilty novel in her daughter's arms and internally started cussing those blasted writers again.

* * *

-_The End. For Real This Time._-

* * *

End Notes: No, this isn't actually my first SephirothHermione idea. I'm plotting/writing one out but I won't post it till Hunter's Eve is finished (when will that be :sarcastic tone:). This also isn't my first time writing Sephiroth – granted, he only appeared for, like, a minute at the end. And if you're a fan of KHR, go to the poll (_Which KHR character is compatible with Hermione romantically?_) on my profile. I actually wrote in the alternative take since the original transcripts of the Seph bot had that tone that screamed Mukuro (hence the Mukuro masquerading as a Sephiroth bot). This isn't actually my first otaku!Hermione idea either; she seems the most likely one to be a geek, anyway. I seem to be writing a lot of HermioneX pairings… but Harry is so overused; there's plenty of SephHarry on FFnet already.


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